Reply to If you are a woman with kids who divorced at 40+, how are things?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP I'm so sorry that you are going through this. It sounds absolutely heart wrenching.

I read the thread, and you mentioned a couple of times that your marriage pre-cheating was rocky, yet you did admit some culpability. Do you think that if you were to make a commitment to ending your part in your prior conflicts that your marriage could improve? Do you think your husband is a fundamentally good guy who got swept up in a rosier seeming situation due to alienation at home?

Unless you have reason to believe that your husband never loved you or is fundamentally a shitty person, then if I were you I would spend the next months really improving myself in the interpersonal department. Do it to be a better person, not to hold onto him. If he is responsive, maybe your marriage can truly improve. If it's just a matter of him not wanting to be with you anymore, then you'll still be in a better place.

Many of us have emotional issues when it comes to very close relationships. You can take this time to try to work on yours. Btw, this would also be excellent for your children to witness.

Take care of yourself. [/quote]

OP again - I totally agree with you.  We did have issues before the cheating.  I completely, totally admit them and am responsible for my part in them.  I have been working HARD to overcome them and have made amazing strides.  I have been doing this since the baby came because I want to be a better person for my kids, for me, and for my husband.  It takes two people to have problems in a relationship and I can honestly say I have given 100% to working on my end of things and my husband even admits that the things that I did that absolutely contributed to our problems are basically gone and he can see that I am really, really doing a good job on myself.  He also admits that he basically turned a blind eye to all of this during his affair because it did not suit his view of me and our relationship and he in fact would be angered by my improved self probably because it undermined how he justified his behavior.  I have no regrets about my behavior while he was off having his affair because I was really working hard on myself and I do have a therapist now and I am willing to completely own my own role in the problems in our relationship, which is actually very hard to do, to take a really analytical eye to yourself and have the courage to improve.  If my marriage doesn't survive, at least I know that I am a better person and that he cannot take my internal progress away.  I am proud of the person I am these days.  Even though this is anonymous, writing that I am proud of myself is extremely hard yet liberating.  It is a spot of pure happiness in this mess - that I can look myself square in the mirror and like what I see.

BUT - I did not deserve what he has done.  He alone is responsible for having an affair.  He could have come to me and talked to me about his unhappiness.  He never once talked to me about it.  He never once tried to think about what role he might have in our problems.  He did not tell me he was unhappy, I could just tell by his behavior.  Hell, he could have left me.  He did, and still does to some extent, blame me for a whole host of things and is just now realizing that he was an equal partner in our troubles.  When things started getting rocky, my approach was to try to work with him and work like a dog to improve myself.  My approach was to tell him that I loved him and our family and I wanted to make things work and that he was so important to me.  His approach was to betray me.  He let me go through months and months of begging him to give our marriage a chance and doing everything in my power to improve myself and he ignored it and spit in my face by having an affair.  This is extremely hard for me to comprehend and I am not sure I will ever understand how he could have continued and in fact made his affair worse while I was giving my all.  I do not know how you could treat a dog like that, much less the wife you took vows with.

Okay, time to step away from DCUM for a bit :) [/quote]

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